Friday, January 11, 2013

Holmes, Lizzie M. “The ‘Slummers’” (1902)

THE “SLUMMERS.”

Three
charming young ladies sat together chatting and eating bonbons and fruit in the
pretty, cosy boudoir belonging to one of them, one afternoon in early spring.
Some one had quoted the saying “One-half the world does not know how the other
half lives,” and pretty Miss Daisy Erwin exclaimed:

“Why can’t
we learn? I want to know if there are people who live in so opposite a manner from
ourselves—let us go and see them.”

Beautiful
Miss Kate Durham, the hostess, thought favorably of the idea. The third young
lady, older somewhat than her companions, sat at a table viewing a few water
colors by an amateur and looked thoughtful over the proposition. She was not
like the others—her dress was rich but quiet, and her graceful head and neck
indicated a queenly nature which her kind, intellectual face belied. She spoke
presently and said:

“What
excuse do you make for breaking in upon people who are very busy, and staring
and asking impertinent questions?”

“Oh, it
isn’t necessary to have an excuse!” flippantly answered Miss Erwin. “Everybody
goes slumming, you know. The slummees like It.”

“How do
you know? They are human beings and ought to possess common human right,” Miss
Mabel Grey answered with considerable earnestness.

Miss
Durham hastened to interpose.

“Oh, but
you know, dear, we may be able to do them good. The more we learn of them the
better chance we have. And they do not mind being looked at, any more than oxen
would while plowing. We will get Cousin Austin to accompany us, and he can
procure a policeman if necessary. Perhaps if Mabel objects to visiting the low
working people, she would prefer to go and see the low, vicious people. Which
shall it be, the dives or the sweatshops?”

“How is
that people who really work should be so poor and low? I suppose they are paid
for their work, aren’t they?”

“It is
called ‘pay,’ and they manage to live upon it,” said Miss Mabel, “and naturally
their surroundings are miserable, and they are half nourished; but if you
expect to find them all ignorant and low in their taste you will find yourselves
mistaken. Some of them are ladylike, and even accomplished, but they are poor
and choose rather to be honest and be robbed than to rob. The shop is a good
place to hide one’s sorrow in—and they can be free when the day’s work is over
to shut themselves in their own poor little rooms and commune with themselves
undisturbed. It is the reason so many prefer the drudgery and privation of
sewing shops rather than ‘go out to service.’“

“Oh, you
weave quite a romantic veil about their lives. I declare. You make me only the
more anxious to see them,” cried Daisy.

The
party was made up for the very next day, and “Cousin Austin,” a very elegant
young man who possessed some strange, misunderstood traits, had been coaxed
into going with them. They dressed quite plainly for them and set out on a
common street car, riding a long way to where the houses were commonplace and
bare of ornament. Then they took a street a little worse looking than the others
and walked until the buildings were only great ugly boxes, set on end and full
of narrow holes called windows. They were very old and looked like aged people,
as they sheltered their swarms of inmates, still trying to be useful and strong
as ever. The pavements were worn into great holes and hillocks, and unpleasant
odors filled the air. The ladies put their handkerchiefs to their lips and
looked about hesitatingly.

“Oh,
this isn’t a beginning, ladies. Do you wish to go back?”

“No, no,”
they exclaimed, “we want to go on.”

“I
believe there are some typical sweatshops in this vicinity,” answered Austin. “I
may have to make some inquiries.”

“Why did
you not procure a policeman?” asked Kate.

“Well,
to tell the truth, I do not like their company. And we might frighten the
children, you know, with their great blue-coated presence.”

“I can’t
understand you, Austin; but do you think we are safe?”

“Safe as
if in your own street. People who are willing to work hard and live as these
people do, will not steal of you. They would have gone the way of the thief
long ago if they had not been determined to be honest at all hazards.”

They
entered an open doorway presently and found they must climb the stairs, narrow,
steep, stairways, with wonderful possibilities in the way of dirt in the
shadows lurking about them. At the third flight the ladies began to complain. “Why
you only have this to climb once, the inmates climb them many times a day.”

“They
must be strong.”

“Far
from it. Look! A baby carrying a baby brother,” and ahead of them they saw a
little girl, thin and colorless, lugging a thin baby almost as big as herself,
up the steep steps, slowly, painfully, but with great solicitude and
faithfulness. They sat down on the stairs and stared at the visitors as they
passed them, looking with wistful, wondering eyes that betrayed depths of
loneliness and suffering.

But soon
the cousin stopped before a dingy little door and knocked. After some moments
the door was cautiously opened a little way and a dark, Jewish, man’s face
looked out, and a voice asked what they wanted.

“What
shall I say we want, young ladies?” Austin turned politely to his companions as
lie asked the question.

“Oh,
anything,” chirped Daisy. “That we want to see his shop and his hands.”

“Yes,
you see, my man,” said Austin deprecatingly.

“We haf
no time—no room for you, and we haf no business mid you,” and the door was
unceremoniously closed. But they had had their glimpse and had discerned some
women sitting as closely together as the machines would permit, that the air
was full of dust and lint and odors and a sickening heat and that the floor
could not be seen for the lint, scraps and litter which covered it, and they
had heard that these women worked there for from twelve to sixteen hours a day.

“That
was but a glimpse—we want more,” and Austin stopped again before a battered
door and rapped respectfully. This time it was flung wide open—a pale, scrawny
looking young man or boy holding it open with one hand while he held a hot iron
in the other; an ironing table stood near, with a red hot little stove loaded
with irons occupied that side of the small room. Three young men, thin-chested,
blue-lipped boys sat at as many machines, with heavy cloth in their sickly
looking hands.

“Yes.
come in—come in,” said the boy at the door. “We have no chairs to offer you
unless we give you ours, but we cannot spare the time to stand. You want to
know all about us. Yes, we live, eat, sleep and work in this little room, and
we work from fourteen to seventeen hours every day in it. We earn from three to
five dollars a week apiece and in the dull seasons two dollars or less or
nothing. We are not extravagant—we can’t be. We don’t drink, and we don’t
eat—much, and we don’t take the medicine a kind doctor prescribed for us—’cause
we can’t get it. We never go anywhere, never take a vacation, and we all have
the consumption and will probably be dead by this time next year. Is there
anything else you would like to know?”

“Pardon
us,” said Austin softly, and backed away from the door. But Kate went forward
and reached out a silver dollar. The boy stared at it but made no move toward
touching it. She let it fall on the floor, and the young man ostentatiously got
a broom and swept it out into the hall. Perhaps it did some poor wretch some
good as the party walked away rather shamefacedly and left, it there.

They
went down into the street now and turned to the south. The finally came to a
row of old frame cottages which had once made decent homes for well-to-do people.
Now, they leaned against each other, were propped up with old beams, and the
weather beaten old walls looked as thought they might fall away any moment.
Austin knocked at the outside door here and presently a little child came and
laboriously opened it. “There are some women here who sew, I believe. Will
you-show us their rooms, please?”

The
child almost softened into a gray smile and murmured “Yes, sir,” as she ran
away with a motion for them to follow. Up a flight of stairs down a long hall
and she called out “Mis’ Wood, some visitors!” and would have run away, but
Austin caught her and gave her a piece of silver. She blushed as she finished
the smile began below stairs and said “Thank you, sir.” The door at hand
quickly opened, and an elderly woman who might have been one’s aunt living in
strict retirement, so neat, so respectable and quiet she appeared, stood in the
doorway awaiting them.

“Will
you walk in? Though we have but an humble place to receive you in,” she bowed
as she stepped aside to let them enter, and immediately began to obtain some
seats, motioning one girl to sit on an upturned box, another to sit on the foot
of a bed and another to go to the pressing table and busy herself there. The
room was very old and poor with the plastering falling off in places, but the
worst spots were covered with clean, new papers and simple woodcuts, while the
windows were draped with old curtains which had at some remote period been
quite handsome. A shelf of books hung on the wall, and in a corner where it was
now covered with half made garments they discerned a little old cabinet organ.
When they were seated, the quiet little elderly woman spoke of the weather as
though to tide over the little embarrassing pause which nearly always ensues
when callers first come, with any proper remark that comes to hand. Even Daisy
was somewhat abashed, and felt decidedly the “fool that had rushed in where
angels,” etc., and wondered how they were to carry out their “slumming” before
these ladylike personages, who would have graced their own parlors. There were
four younger women working at light calico wrappers, and the place had no
suggestion of the ordinary “sweatshop;” yet those pretty garments were brought
from a big manufacturing establishment down town and neatly made up for an
incredible price, considering human beings had to live on it: but these
delicate women preferred to work thus than to expose themselves to the stare of
the world and go to the large manufacturing houses; they wore out fewer
clothes, too. The faces of these women told sad stories; of sensitiveness,
unregarded refinement, silently borne poverty, sorrowful pasts—each was a “woman
with a past”—a past that was still with them. While a difficult conversation
was struggling along between the elderly lady and Austin and Kate, Mabel had
fixed her gaze upon a sweet, melancholy face of a girl near the window with
waving, coal black hair and deep, sad, violet eyes, and the low, white beautiful
brow of a Madonna. She could not help herself—she must go to this girl and then
she placed her hand upon hers and spoke low and softly to her. Daisy, watching
her, wondered to herself: “There, she will go to one of these women as though
she were one of them and gain their good will immediately. Is it because, or in
spite of the fact that she is richer than any of us?”

Meanwhile
Mabel was saying: “Your face attracts me. I have been thinking that I have
known and loved you sometime in the past, perhaps in some other life,
but—somewhere. Let me be your friend—let me know and love you again.”

The girl
looked surprised and at first indignant.

“Is this
a new way?” she asked. “You do not come out bluntly like the others and ask us
how much we earn and what we do with it, and why we don’t go out to service,
and pry into our private affairs generally. But that is what you came for, I
presume. Though why any of you do it, I cannot understand; you do no one any
good. It must be just to gratify a small, unworthy curiosity.”

“Believe
me, I am in earnest. I want you to be my friend. I have no friend such as you
would be to me. You—remind—you remind me of a dear little sister I lost when I
was twelve years old. I have been poor and I have worked hard, scrubbed floors,
sewed, picked berries, anything I could get to do to earn my bread. Don’t think
I do not know how it all is—I understand all about it. I am rich now but a true
friend is harder to find than work was in the old days.” The young woman was
looking at her interestedly now, with a certain strange expectancy in her eyes,
and Mabel was encouraged.

“I will
tell you my story. My mother died when I was twelve, my father several years
before. My dear mother was poor, her little income died with her. My dear
sister was ten years old, and when we were left alone two different neighbors
took us. Soon afterward the people who took my sister went away west to take up
a farm; I have never heard of them since. My people were not kind to me, and I
ran away from them. Then it was that I worked so hard. When about sixteen I was
undermaid in a rich maiden lady’s house. She was taken very sick and they found
that I could nurse and care for her better than anyone else. I nursed her
through a long, severe illness and when she recovered partially she still
needed me. She lived a number of years, but in a weak and nervous condition and
could not bear to have me away from her. She had a favorite nephew who
displeased her by refusing to marry the lady she had chosen for him and going
away to Africa. At last she died and it was found that she had left all her
large fortune to me, cutting off her nephew without a cent. I want to find him
and give it back to him, or part of it, for I am sure my dear old friend would
like me to keep some of it.”

The girl’s
eyes were glowing now, and she said in a voice of suppressed excitement:

“Your
name is Mabel Percy, your mother’s name was Margaret, and—and you are my
sister—my name is Helen. I am your little Nellie.” Mabel’s heart told her in an
instant that it was true and the two girls were soon wrapped in each other’s
arms, weeping with joy, and murmuring broken words of fondness. The others
scarcely realizing what had happened, looked on very much affected, for some
minutes; at last the girls separated and took a long, good look at each other
and each seemed satisfied. Nellie was a very pretty girl despite the pallid
cheeks and the purple shadows about her temples, and Mabel, any one could be
proud of her. She turned at last to her friends and said: “You must forgive me
for such a display, but I have found my lost sister, whom I have not dared to
hope ever to see again. I cannot express—I do not realize it yet,” and again
she clasped the poor girl in her arms. Daisy in her impulsiveness hastened up
to greet the newly-found sister, but Kate hesitated for she could not quite
bring herself to clasp hands as an equal with a woman whom she had found
working in a sweatshop. But she reflected that Nellie was very nice looking and
that she would be Mabel’s protégé; that she would dress well and make a
sensation in society perhaps, and she would best make her peace with her while
she had a chance; so she yielded after a little hesitancy and came and
cordially took her hand and kissed her on her brow.

Mabel
insisted on carrying away her sister that moment; it was not necessary for her
to go to her poor little room for anything. She had introduced Austin, who as
deferentially and admiringly bowed and greeted her as though she were a
princess. Helen was petted and rested until she regained all the strength and
vigor that a young woman of her age ought to possess, and as she went out more
and more became a great favorite. But neither she nor her sister ever forgot
the sweatshop victims; though they never intruded upon them, never asked
impertinent questions. They went to their meetings, or were properly introduced
when an opportunity afforded. And when they called upon them, did so as one
lady would upon another, only that their conversations were freer and more
confidential. Whatever could be done to help them without making them feel they
were objects of charity, the two young women accomplished; and they were both
wellloved by the working girls of the city. Young Austin Durham, too, because
deeply interested in the laborers and their problems, and his friends declare
he is becoming as great a crank as the extremest of socialists. He is speaking,
writing, giving money wherever these will do the most good; and it is said that
he will be successful in winning the sister who is taking to her new life
wonderfully well.

And I
have recently heard that the long-absent nephew has returned and that he and
Miss Mabel, who had taken her patron’s name of Grey, were much pleased with
each other; and that Mabel, finding no other way of bestowing her fortune upon
him, has concluded to marry him. And it is to be hoped that they will live
happy ever afterward, as happy as people can be while so much injustice still
prevails.